ChocChocPop iPhone review

Somewhat worryingly, playing ChocChocPop invariably makes me think of Japanese schoolgirls. Not in any perverted, specialist-desire type way. No, it’s just that I imagine ChocChocPop was developed with a particular demographic in mind, namely the schoolgirls of Nippon.

ChocChocPop is a match-three game, populated by “realistic 3D rendered chocolates (real eye candy)!” Emily, the anime-style protagonist, is present throughout the puzzling, throwing a peace sign or giggling bashfully whenever you finish a level. By all logic, ChocChocPop should be rubbish, but I actually quite enjoyed it.

So basically you spend your time moving chocolates around with the aim of lining up three or more matching sweets. Nothing new there. But ChocChocPop benefits hugely from its four different modes, and an array of interesting power-ups.

In Classic Mode, you have to fill up the heart meter to progress. Arcade Mode is a little more frantic, and sees you battling to keep the juice in the heart meter from running out. There’s also Endless Mode, which, as the name suggests, is, erm, endless.

But the most appealing game type by far is Puzzle Mode, in which you have to plan carefully and clear the screen with a set number of moves. You really have to think ahead and visualise how the combos will chain together. There are 110 puzzles in total.

The power-ups keep things interesting too. There’s a little pair of lips, which can be used to eat a nuisance chocolate (say, for example, it’s the only chocolate of its kind on-screen). The bomb, predictably, blows up several chocolates at a time. There are also a couple of fruit machines. The first removes all instances of a particular chocolate; the other replaces all chocolates of one type with another.

Maybe I’m slightly biased because I have a soft spot for anime nonsense, but ChocChocPop is a highly enjoyable puzzler. Indeed, the only thing missing is giant robots.

Pros

Four different modes

Loads of power-ups

Colourful anime-style presentation

Cons

A bit girlie

Puzzle mode is stupidly easy at first

It really is embarassingly girlie

Summary: There are lots of better games available for 59p, but if you’ve exhausted the classics and crave something new, ChocChocPop is well worth a blast.